


Polis By the Setting Sun

by BlackIndiaInk



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, from tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 09:02:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6073279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackIndiaInk/pseuds/BlackIndiaInk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From this prompt on tumblr: Clexa: Lexa summons Clarke to her balcony, and everyone thinks that shes gonna kill her (even Clarke herself), but Lexa just wants to showoff polis and watch the sunset.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Polis By the Setting Sun

I’d been here for a week, sitting in the room they gave me, luxury for the grounders. I’d spent a lot of time out on the balcony, crumbled and dangerous as it was. Polis lay below but I had no sense of what it was or who was down there. I was a prisoner but not. I knew Lexa wouldn’t let me leave. Killing me would make sense but I was alive.

It hurt, this waiting, knowing she was only rooms away. If it just been about her betraying my people I could hate her and live with it but she had betrayed me. I felt more for her than I ever should have and she poisoned it. I drank her poison and died inside.

I turned when a knock came at the door. One of my guards slipped in, standing before me. I waited for him to tell me my fate. I could read it in his eyes, the death I had coming. He had no mercy to offer, no comfort. To him I was Wanheda, Commander of Death. More mythic figure than, young woman put in impossible situations.

“Heda has summoned you,” he intoned.

My jaw set in a firm line. “What if I don’t want to be summoned.”

He didn’t flinch, didn’t move, didn’t change his expression. “You will come.” He started towards me but I put a hand up.

“There’s no need to get any closer.” I walked past him and out the door, nearly into the second guard waiting outside.

He silently started down the hall, and I felt the presence of the first guard at my back. This is a death march. The thought frightened me, mostly because I almost found a sense of relief in it. I was reckless with my life the past months but I could never kill myself. Lexa would do that for me.

Her throne room was empty except for her. I’d expected a public execution. Maybe this was just the prelude. She would take me down to the ground and kill me in front of the people later.

I thought of my mother, Bellamy, Octavia and all of the people that feel something knowing that I was gone. I wasn’t afraid for them. I’d left Bellamy there and he would lead, help make the decisions that I would. My Mom, she would hurt the worst but she would live. I wasn’t worried and I was only a little afraid to die.

“Clarke…”

My head rose at her call, like it always did. I hated myself for how she still affected me. Even my hate existed only because I loved her. She was in my bloodstream. I could feel her.

“Come,” she demanded.

I waited until she put a hand out to step forward, past her and onto the balcony. “Can you just make this quick. I don’t want to hear what you have to say.” I turned on her. “Your reasons that I have to die. I know what they are. I’m at peace with it.”

She found my eyes with her own, hurt was there. Good, I wanted it to hurt. “Just promise me. Don’t let them see what you do with my body. My mom, Bellamy…”

“Clarke.” her voice cut into me with my own name as a weapon. she turned toward the open air, staring out over it. “I’m not going to kill you.”

“Why am I here?” I gritted my teeth, my hands clenching and unclenching. I wanted to hit her. She was toying with me.

“Remember when I told you that I wanted you to see Polis?”

She looked at me, stoic as always, taking me back to before she broke me.

“Yes,” I breathed. I couldn’t look at her anymore. So, I turned to the sky, where the sun was sinking. Pink and purple streaked the sky, filling the earth with dusk. It was beautiful, like so many things here. Since we came down sunsets were one of the things that made me calm.

I could find something more in the twilight than I could in the dawn. There was more peace, the night was coming and though darkness was frightening, it brought the world to a quiet place.

“That’s why I brought you here. I wanted you to see what I see.”

I looked down into the city. We were so high it was impossible to see much detail below but I saw the beauty she spoke of. I could find her city beautiful, understand on one level why she had made the choice she did but still be ripped asunder by it.

“I didn’t get to see it when I was brought here with the bag over my head,” I groused.

“I’m sorry you had to come to Polis like that but it was for the best. Protecting your identity was necessary.”

I cast a side glance at her, wondering why she thought this was going to make things better. “I see Polis. I appreciate what you’ve built but that doesn’t change what you did.”

her face never changed. She was always contained, gathered within herself. Her eyes betrayed her at times. Right now they showed regret, love. I turned away, unwilling to see it, unwilling to let her sway me.

“You would have taken the deal. You say you make the choices you do for your people. So do I. That choice was my only one and it came with a sacrifice that I paid.. I’m still paying.”

The pause, a shift of tone in her voice and I was looking at her. She had such power, not only over her people but over me. I wasn’t sure if I could take it. “All choices have consequences. You could have stayed. You made A choice. It wasn’t the only one you had.”

Lexa came closer, slowly like she was afraid I would bolt. “Think about it, Clarke. Consider what would have happened if I hadn’t taken the deal. The plan would have failed but you made it work without us.”

I tried to relax but she threw me, made me think about things in a way that I didn’t want to. I just wanted to be angry right now. I didn’t want her to make me feel anything else. Anger was easy, love was hard.

We stood there, looking over her domain, silent and tall, both thinking things that we would probably never say. It was our curse and our responsibility that kept us from being closer. We were leaders and leaders made hard choices in the heat of battle. Those choices were not about us. We gave over our own worlds to rule the collective. A coalition of worlds converging to create a universe that was ours to watch over.


End file.
